What Are Memos & Splits and How Do I Add Them?
Splits and Memos are an important part of campaign finance, especially when it comes to compliance reports. Not having the correct data entry can cause non-compliant reports, as well as cause confusion with financial totals in ISP.
What is the difference between a Split and a Memo?
Splits are parts of other transactions. The most common examples are the end vendors with credit card payments and Reimbursements, and also checks from conduits where you’re itemizing the source donations.
A Memo is a shadow version of a transaction with no actual financial impact. Memos are standalone transactions. While they may be related to another transfer, they are not part of it. A common example would be Redesignations and donated legal services, which are not considered Inkind contributions.
Neither Memos nor Splits have any impact on cash or net worth.
How do I add a Split or Memo?
Splits
At the bottom of the transaction is a Splits section. Click the Specify Splits button to add a Split. You’ll then receive fields for Entity, Date, and more. If you are creating an Expense for a donation made to another committee, the general rule when it comes to which Election is to use the same election for the memo as was used for the parent Election above.
If you want to delete a transaction with Splits, you must delete the Splits first before you can delete the transaction as a whole.
If the Split is dated before the election and the Whole is dated after the election, the Split will pull with the Whole after the election if the Whole is itemized.
Memo
Create the transaction the standard way. The option to mark the transaction as a Memo will be at the top and labeled Is Memo.
What is a nested split?
A nested split is a split of a split. We do NOT recommend data entry that creates a nested split. This can cause calculation discrepancies and other issues, most notably on compliance reports.
